Since April, Col. Christopher Short has commanded the 366th Fighter Wing, serving as the top officer at Mountain Home Air Force Base. He spoke Dec. 18 in Boise as part of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce’s CEO Speaker Series. His comments here are condensed from a transcript prepared by chamber PR Director Caroline Merritt.

A TELLING ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE

This is a pretty neat opportunity for me. Usually when I get 140 people or so to talk to, it’s because I’ve ordered them to be there. And they’re not there eating a $40 dinner. So, little bit of pressure.

When I was a vice commander at Moody [Air Force Base in Valdosta, Ga.], one of the things we talked about was the gap between civilian and the military. There was a big article that came out in Time magazine. Currently less than half of 1 percent of our nation serves in the active military. A lot of those folks are siblings or children of people who served in the military.

Eighty percent of our military lives in five states: North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Texas and California.

They say: Where do our military members come from? They come from the South and the Mountain West. I came up here for an eye appointment the other day, and my doctor asked me what I did. I told him I was down at the base. He has two sons and a daughter all serving in the Army. That’s a rarity nowadays.

My wife took the car in to the Acura dealer. Two of the guys working on the car talked about how they have brothers and sisters in the service currently serving overseas. Again, a rarity, but because of where you live and where we work and live.

That article talked about how I benefit, how the airmen I’m with benefit from thank-you’s from a nation. My father, who served 35 years, went to war in Vietnam, didn’t benefit. But I also live with a community — and this is the premise the article made — that is more and more detached from that serving sector of the nation.

And they know that there’s a base out there, but they don’t know what goes on there and argue that some don’t even care. And that they’re very grateful, not so much for what is done, but because they don’t have to do it.

It’s a fairly dark article. But it triggered the mindset of: We need to get out there and communicate what we do and why we do it, because we’re all taxpayers here. We all support that system, and it’s integral to, I think, our national defense.

THE BASE’S HISTORY

Mountain Home Air Force Base [was] built in 1942 as a B-24 training base. It closed like a lot of World War II bases when the war went away. It opened back up in 1953 as a strategic air command. We drilled missile silo holes.

In 1966, we went away from strategic air command and went to small aircraft. Tactical air command.

About 1972, the 366th Fighter Wing came back from Vietnam.

In the 1990s, Gen. Burwick Pete set up the composite wing, where Mountain Home Air Force Base had F-15Cs, which are air-to-air fighters; F-15Es, strike eagles known for air-to-air and air-to-ground; F-16s with a dual-role mission; the tankers, the KC-135s, they would need to get to the fight; the B-1 bombers to bring the heavy munitions to the fight, [and] the air-control squadron to control the whole fight.

In the post-9/11 era, we took those functions and we moved them to [other] bases. Slowly, things were taken away.

You’ll hear us called the Mountain Home Gunfighters. That nickname came from Danang Air Force Base in Vietnam, when the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at the time was getting defeated by the MIGs [Soviet-made fighter jets] in the Vietnam War. They would get into dogfights with the MIGs, and they were unable to shoot the MIGs down. A famous man at the time, Colonel Booth, decided to put a gun on the bottom of the F-4. [In] the next four to six weeks, they killed five MIGs in air-to-air combat. And the legend grew, and they became known as the Gunfighters.

WHAT SHORT TELLS AIRMEN

Ride hard, shoot straight, and always speak the truth. I meet with every first-time airman that comes to Mountain Home Air Force Base, and I talk about what this means to me.

Ride hard is to work hard and play hard. I need your best every day. When I give you time off, I need you to go play hard, I need you to relax, because I’m going to work you hard the next day. The things that we ask of this generation are amazing. What I ask those 18- to 24-year-olds that make the heart of the U.S. military is amazing.

And the fact that we don’t have a U.S. military in order to provide you a retirement check. We don’t have a U.S. military in order to provide you with quality of life as an airman. We have a U.S. military to defend our shores, to fight our nation’s battles on our enemy’s territory, to defend our country at all costs.

That Time article talked about how the military tries to put itself above society, because they say it’s so important to have integrity, service for self, and excellence in all we do. I think we’re a reflection of our society, but we’re a reflection of the best part of our society. It’s imperative to what we do.

‘EVERYTHING WE’RE BASED ON IS TRUST.’

When I have a 22-year-old person fixing a $54 million aircraft at 2 in the morning when it’s raining, and 35 miles per hour winds like it was last night, it’s 20 degrees out there, I need him to do the tech order precisely. I can’t have him take a shortcut, or we will kill two people the next morning at 9 a.m. upon take-off. That’s the trust I give them. That’s the integrity I require from them.

A GOOD FLYING RANGE

Recently, after seven years of hard work, we expanded the range over 122,000 [additional] acres. Last year alone, we had 2,000 visitors from 112 different units flying 22 different aircraft.

When we’re not using this air space, we give it back to Salt Lake City, so when you fly from Salt Lake City to Seattle now, your flight will be shorter and it’ll save money on gas.

FLYING TO THE MIDEAST AND AFGHANISTAN

I send airmen out to the United Arab Emirates, and they get very frustrated because they’re not dropping bombs on bad guys in Afghanistan. The maintainers get frustrated when all the weapons come back on the aircraft. It’s not popular to use air power in Mr. Karzai’s government right now. The collateral damage is too expensive. We do it when it has to be done, but it’s not preferred.

But I tell those guys that right now, every time they fly, the folks north of the Gulf of Iran or the Persian Gulf, they notice. Every day they fly with the F-22s that are there, the F-15Cs that are there, the KC-135s that are there, they understand the combat capability that lies 60 miles to the south. They provide a strategic deterrent six months at a time.

I’ve got medics in Honduras who are working on a counter-narcotic mission, taking care of people in hospitals. We’ve got medics training people in Afghanistan.

Post-2014, the operations tempo will continue. The stack of things we’re supposed to go do, that are unfilled, will just fill in where those Afghanistan missions were before.

FAMILY SACRIFICES

I’ve got a wife and three daughters. Pride and joy of my life. It’s my wife’s birthday today. My daughter is a senior in high school in Mountain Home, her fourth high school in four years. I have a freshman and a fifth-grader. Tough. Tougher than I thought.

When I left Valdosta in January of last year, the [word] came out that “Your greatest dream to be wing commander has come true.” There’s nothing like telling your wife and your kids that your dream came true and then they leave the room crying, because you’re uplifting them from what’s important to them and moving them again.

My kids are happy we’re going to be here for two years.

AVIATORS WHO LIVE IN BOISE

Fifteen to 17 percent of my people live in Boise. I’ve got about 800 homes; I’ve got about 500 dorm rooms on base. The rest live in Mountain Home, or they live up here in Boise and commute.

THE ROLE OF CIVILIANS

I’ve got civilians that are critical to my mission that have been there for years. They’re the cohesive continuity when we rotate people in every two to three years.

I have contractors that I can’t do without, that watch my front gate, that work in my urgent-care center and my hospital.

THE BASE’S ECONOMIC IMPACT

We think we provide almost a billion dollars in economic impact. That star’s coming from the Boise State University Department of Economics. So I’m trying to gain some credibility there by going to the home team.

My airmen, my families, they go to Mountain Home, they go to Boise to recreate. That’s where we spend our money.

I want to help you do more business with the base if that should be your choice. I’d like to build that partnership where we can help you, where you can give back to my airmen when they need something.